Quick quiz: Name the leading basketball scorer in the world. Would you believe ... Rick Hughes?

The Walnut Hills High and Thomas More College product, now 25, is averaging 35.2 points for a team (Wardieh Rosaire) in Beirut, Lebanon. The Global Basketball Network
(www.eurobasket.com),
which pools statistics from every pro league in the world, has Hughes atop its scoring list.

Even though it's Lebanon and not the NBA, 32.5 points per game is a heck of an accomplishment, said Sam Foggin, Hughes' Florida-based agent. There are 2-3 Americans per team there, so he's not doing it against a bunch of jerks, either.

Hughes, a 6-foot-8, 235-pound for ward, was a Division III All-American at Thomas More. He has spent the last three years as a basketball nomad: three European tours, one International Basketball Association season, a U.S. tour with Marathon Oil, four NBA rookie camps.

Hughes, who also averages 12.8 rebounds, had a promising showing at an Atlanta Hawks minicamp last June but couldn't wait out the lockout to see if he would be signed.

The dollars they threw at us in Lebanon were three times what he made last year in Cyprus, Foggin said. They like him so much, they've offered us another two-year deal with an NBA "out' clause (should he sign stateside).